The queen of the talk shows will finally hang up her microphone after 25 years of The Oprah Winfrey Show. We've been here before – she'd previously set 1997 and 2006 as retirement dates – but this time it's really, really happening, honest. She's leaving in 2011 to concentrate on her new channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network, but it doesn't seem that her show will be transferred to it.

The richest woman in entertainment has left a huge mark on television – and wider culture – since her debut in 1986 but not everyone sees her as a positive force.

What do you think of her legacy? Has her book club been a boon for literacy, or do you lament that any individual should wield so much power over the bestseller lists? Her confessional interviews made headlines the world over, but some dismiss them as phoney emotionalism. Has she been a valuable role model for women and African-Americans? And will anyone else give Tom Cruise the platform for quite such strange behaviour?